5 million gmail accounts stand compromised as a massive database of emails and passwords was published onto a Russian bitcoin security board, late Tuesday evening.
The original ‘.txt’ file had a list of 4.93 million accounts, 60 percent of which had credible passwords, claimed ‘tvskit’, the forum user who was responsible for publishing the text file.
The forum admin has removed the passwords now, making only the logins available, which chiefly belong to users utilizing Google services like Gmail and G+. According to Russian IT news website, CNews some users had found their data in the list.
Since this leak, a string of phishing sites have been claiming to confirm whether an individual’s email was in the leaked list by asking for emails and passwords. Google has been advising its users to not fall prey to such phishing attacks and set up a strong password and enable two-step login verification for their accounts, reports Francois Lenoir for Reuters.
Russia’s largest email services, Yandex and Mail.Ru, suffered similar leaks few days ago, which listed 4.66 and 1.26 million accounts respectively, reports Reuters.
It is believed that the data leaked may have been phished or hacked from other websites over an extended period. As Google Russia is carrying out its investigation, any real threat to the user is still being questioned. The source of the leak, however, is yet to be identified.
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(Image Credit: Sam Greenhalgh)
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